


The Human Dress

by Flenser



Series: A Divine Image [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Illness, Implied Sexual Abuse, M/M, Origin Story, armin's hair best hair, coarse language, mentions of bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 09:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flenser/pseuds/Flenser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He has a...<i>complicated</i> relationship with his hair,” Eren explained after a long moment, picking up a dry wash rag from the bedside table. </p>
<p>“What’s so complicated about hair?” </p>
<p>Jean's about to find out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Human Dress

Jean loved Sundays.

Sundays were the one day each week where the trainees of the 104th weren’t expected to do _anything_ \- no physical training, no chores, no studying. A day free of any and all responsibilities and open to what one made of it. The mess hall even served beef on Sundays, which was enough to put the entire camp in a mood just short of _giddiness_. Yeah, Sundays were pretty fucking great.

Except every fourth Sunday. Jean hated those.

On every fourth Sunday, instead of lazing about in his bunk or goofing off with Marco in the rec room, he and the rest of the 104th performed community service in the poorest of the area villages as a sort of _outreach program_. They were told that good works such as manual labor, nursing and child-minding were meant to give back to the community that supported them, but Jean had long suspected that it was actually designed to remind the most desperate that the military was always a way out. After witnessing some of the living conditions there Jean supposed that even the Survey Corps would be attractive, but he didn’t concern himself with that idea overmuch. It wasn’t _his_ destiny to become titan food.

It was the morning after one such Sunday that found Armin Arlert collapsing in the mess hall amid general chaos, because an hysterical shriek about his being on nursing duty the day before sent everyone scattering in fear. Eren and Mikasa had dragged him off to the infirmary and two days later there he remained, the victim of a scarlatina outbreak that the village leaders neglected to disclose.

Armin was expected to live, but no one at the training facility had ever had scarlatina while there, being a children’s disease and all, and since the village that had so readily accepted their assistance declared they only had enough medication to treat their own people, the appropriate drugs to ensure Armin’s recovery were a half day’s ride away at a military supply depot. Once it was reported that no staff could be spared to retrieve them the usually stoic Mikasa practically threw herself at Shadis to beg permission and, to everyone’s surprise, he gave it, declaring her impeccable record far and above any handicap that could possibly result from losing two days of training, _unlike the rest of you worthless maggots. And since genius Jaeger found it appropriate to drive away the medical staff, would any of the worthless maggots who’d had scarlatina at some point in their worthless lives please volunteer to sit with Arlert while Jaeger caught a shower and forty winks?_

As it turned out Jean and Reiner were the only ones from the 104th who’d raised their hands - which was bullshit, Jean thought, because scarlatina wasn’t _that_ rare - and a coin flip soon after found him opening the door to the infirmary and an afternoon of mind-numbing, but potentially relaxing, boredom.

“What are you doing here?” Eren asked peevishly as he looked up and spied Jean entering the room.

Jean rolled his eyes and put up his hands in mock surrender. “I come in peace,” he drawled. “I was sent to relieve you.”

“ _You?_ ” Eren scoffed.

Jean grit his teeth. He knew it was a dig about his fairly easy upbringing compared to Eren’s own. None of the three from Shiganshina ever really talked about what happened to them back then, but rumors had a habit of circulating in a training camp full of bored and stressed teenagers and if even half of them were true they painted an ugly picture. He wanted to be compassionate for Armin’s sake since the boy had always been nothing but kind to him and everyone else, but Eren’s attitude had already begun to wear him down. It usually did. “Kids in Trost got scarlatina, too,” he told him as evenly as he could.

Eren just grunted noncommittally and went back to rolling up Armin’s sleeve, revealing what looked like hundreds of little red dots peppered across the boy’s arm. They stood out in such stark contrast against his fair skin that Jean thought they almost looked painted on.

“Shadis’ orders,” Jean murmured absently, watching in slight consternation. He’d had scarlatina so long ago he couldn’t remember what it was even like. He shook his head and scrunched his nose in distaste, looking back at Eren. “You’ve been in here for two days - go take a shower or something. You stink.”

“I don’t want your help _or_ your opinion,” Eren snapped, reaching over Armin’s small frame for his other sleeve.

“Look, normally I wouldn’t give a fuck what you want, but Reiner’s the only other person who’s had it and I’ll gladly swap with him. He was really bummed he didn’t lose the coin toss.”

Eren’s hands froze at Jean’s carefully phrased words and he shot him a glare, as Jean expected. Reiner paid Armin a bit more attention than most and it never failed to set Eren on edge.

“The fuck you will,” Eren growled and gripped Armin’s thin wrist a little tighter.

“Those are your choices. Shadis said if he doesn’t see you walking out of here in ten minutes he’s going to give us _all_ laps.” Eren was dense sometimes but Jean knew he’d pick up the implied threat of group retaliation if he didn’t do as their instructor ordered.

Eren stared at him long and hard before setting his jaw in resigned anger. “Fine,” he finally declared. “But I’m _only_ going for a shower and a change of clothes, so don’t get comfortable.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jean replied dryly, and as Eren turned his attention to a wash basin and pitcher on the little bedside table Jean finally allowed himself to take a good look at the sick boy in the cot before him.

Armin looked...well, aside from the spots he could see on his arms Armin looked shockingly alive, even somehow prettier than usual, long eyelashes nestled against smooth cheeks flushed like he’d just run a mile or played in the snow. Weren’t sick people supposed to be ugly and pale, or gaunt, or something? Not for the first time he found himself wondering if this kid was even real. And his hair -

“Fuck, Jaeger...why’d you scalp him?” he yelped. He was practically as bald as Connie.

Eren glanced at him over his shoulder as he filled the wash basin with water from the pitcher. “ _I_ didn’t. One of the medics did, saying it would help lower his fever.” The acidic tone of his voice proved what he obviously thought about _that_.

“Ah,” Jean said as his presence finally made sense.

Eren snorted. “I’ll punch him again the next time I see him, too.”

Jean rolled his eyes at his tiresome show of aggression. If it wasn’t for the promise of killing titans he was pretty sure there would be a lot more medics walking around with shiners courtesy of one Eren Jaeger. “Look, are you going to go, or what?”

“Yes. _Fuck_. Just...sit there,” he gestured to a chair on the opposite side of the cot, “and watch his breathing. His throat’s really swollen so his breathing might be a little off.”

Jean mock-saluted, to Eren’s obvious annoyance, and dropped into the chair. Watching was easy. He could watch the kid breathe all day.

“He was puking this morning, too. I think it’s over but just in case make sure to catch it in time or you’re going to be the one cleaning it up. The bucket’s under the cot.”

Jean fidgeted and paled a little at that one, never having been good with vomit.

“Don’t wake him up with your loud mouth,” Eren continued, a smirk playing at his lips.

Jean realized he was intentionally trying to get a rise out of him but he was determined not to take the bait. “Anything else, _Commander_?” he sneered.

“Don't fucking touch him. Perverts like you always want to touch him.”

Jean leaped to his feet, determination instantly forgotten and balled an angry fist. “Who you calling a pervert?” he retorted hotly.

“Don't play dumb with me,” Eren shot back. “I've seen how you look at him.” 

Jean’s face flushed with indignation but he couldn’t deny his gaze would linger a little too long on the blond boy every now and then. It wasn’t _his_ fault Armin looked better than most of the girls - excepting Mikasa, of course - with his feminine stature and pretty face, and he knew he wasn’t the only one who had mistaken him for a girl at first. When it was discovered that Armin was assigned to the boys’ barracks there were a lot of awkward moments as they all avoided the kid and quietly dealt with their ill-gotten crushes. “No one’s that stupid,” he said snidely. Jean was honest to a fault but he wasn’t about to admit to _that_. “Everyone sees how you’re always all over each other.” And yet according to Marco they were apparently _just friends_. Friends who touched way too much and held hands and even shared a bunk.

Eren narrowed his eyes and gave him a long, calculating look. “Good,” he grunted, admitting nothing himself but obviously deciding to believe him, though Jean wasn’t sure if that extended to trust quite yet. It probably never would. “If he wakes up, don’t mention his hair.”

Jean cocked an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Can’t you just do what I tell you?”

“Sure, but what if he asks?”

“Just come find me and keep your mouth shut,” Eren instructed, his tone indicating he was done with Jean’s questioning. “I don’t want him hearing about it from anyone but me.”

Jean shrugged. “It’s just hair.”

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand, Kirschtein,” Eren warned, voice low.

Something in Eren’s vehemence told Jean he was finally getting close to learning something about the mysterious Shiganshina trio and curiosity ate at him like a canker. He peered at Eren, eyes narrowed, and considered his chances. They weren’t _good_ , but secrets in the training camp were worth more than their meager stipends and he couldn’t allow such an opportunity to pass. “So make me understand, _Jaeger_.”

Eren gazed at him in that creepy crazed way of his, breath loud but even, fists flexing as he considered Jean’s request. Jean was actually a little surprised that he wasn’t immediately outright denied and thrown out of the room with a punch to the gut for his effort, but one thing he knew about secrets was that those keeping them often didn’t want to, and things had a habit of coming out when pushed. So what if he was doing the pushing?

“He has a... _complicated_ relationship with his hair,” Eren explained after a long moment, picking up a dry wash rag from the bedside table.

“What’s so complicated about hair?”

“His parents kept it long when he was a kid - some old religious thing,” Eren told him and waved his hand dismissively when he caught Jean’s surprised look. “It wasn’t anything like that. They weren’t believers, as far as I know. Just something they learned about and liked, I guess. Anyway, they died when we were pretty young and he just kept growing it. I think it reminded him of his mother. He takes after her, you know.”

Jean nodded. It was never stated so plainly before but he’d long ago assumed Armin’s delicate looks had to have come from the women of his family. He couldn’t imagine a man looking the way he did, at least. “She must have been beautiful,” Jean said without thinking and braced himself, afraid that Eren would call him a pervert again and pick a fight for indirectly calling his friend beautiful. 

To Jean’s relief Eren just gave him an oddly appreciative look. “She was,” he said carefully and dipped the rag in the wash basin, wringing it out before using it to daub away a bit of sweat that had accumulated on Armin’s forehead. “His hair was just past his shoulders when some older kids knocked him down and cut it off.” His eyes suddenly blazed with renewed anger as he recalled the events of that day. “They told him only girls had long hair,” he ground out, “and if Armin wanted to be a girl so badly he should wear a dress, so they stuffed him into one and cut off all his hair with a knife. They did a shit job of it, too - took weeks for all the wounds to heal.” He reached out and with unexpected gentleness stroked a finger along a thin white mark just below the hairline at Armin’s forehead, a place usually concealed by childish fringe, and that’s when Jean noticed that the boy’s scalp was practically riddled with faded scars.

Jean frowned. He knew children could be awful - fuck, he’d been one - but cruelty of that magnitude was something beyond his imagination. He opened his mouth to say as much, but Eren cut him off.

“I begged him not to grow it out again,” Eren continued, eyes and voice softer, obviously fond, “but he said keeping it short would mean the bullies won.”

“That’s stupid,” Jean interjected with a judgemental snort. He was sympathetic to a point, but doing something that specifically invited the ire of Armin’s tormentors was just fucking dumb.

Eren made a sound of disgust. “ _You_ would think so,” Jean opened his mouth to protest but Eren barreled on, “but he was right. He’s always right about those kinds of things.”

Jean felt his cheeks color a little in shame and fidgeted uncomfortably on his feet. As stupid as he thought it was to value ideals over one’s life, he couldn’t help but feel a little guilty when people like Eren called him out on it. It made him feel like he was missing something, some bullet point on the checklist of humanity that got skipped when Jean Kirschtein was brought into creation, and while he didn’t quite understand it, he couldn’t help but admire it a little bit. Not in Eren, though, no fucking way, because something else was missing from that guy entirely - but in Armin...yeah. Humanity did something right when it made _him_.

Jean’s face flushed a little more and he looked away to avoid Eren’s curious stare. “So the kid’s noble,” he grumbled in an effort to hide himself. “It’s great and all, but since when did it do him any good?”

“It kept Mikasa alive.”

Jean shot him a look that must have come across as more interested than confused, because Eren rolled his eyes with a snort.

“Fucking figures,” Eren muttered. “You have a one-track mind, you know that?” He daubed the cloth on Armin’s forehead again while Jean just glared at him. Even if Jean tried to explain anything he knew Eren wouldn’t believe him, so instead of sparking another argument he dropped back into the chair as a signal for him to continue. It worked.

“You know we were in the refugee camps, yeah?”

Jean nodded stiffly.

“Mikasa got pneumonia the last winter we were there, right before we could enlist.” Eren suddenly met Jean’s gaze with a challenging look in his eyes, as if daring him to comment on what he was about to say next. “We didn’t have any money for a doctor and no one would treat her for free, so Armin sneaked off one afternoon and sold his hair to a wig maker to pay for it. It was past his shoulders again and he was _so happy_ , but he fucking _sold_ it so Mikasa could get better. Don’t tell me nobility doesn’t do any good.”

Shame shot through Jean’s heart again and he furrowed his brows, suddenly sober and uncomfortable, feeling like he’d bitten off more than he could chew. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked angrily. Secrets were well and good but damn it, he didn’t sign up for being made to feel like a piece of shit just for knowing next to nothing about a pretty little blond boy’s past.

“You think he’s weak,” Eren replied, that hard edge back in his voice. “You and everyone else, but he’s not. Just because he uses his brain instead of muscles.” He tossed the cloth nonchalantly into the water basin before turning and regarding Jean with hard eyes. “Besides, you’re a pushy piece of shit and would’ve asked questions once you noticed the scars. It’s better I tell you than force him to relive it.”

Jean glared, unamused.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” Eren sighed, suddenly looking exhausted. He must not have slept much, if at all, the entire two days. “Come get me if anything happens.”

Jean nodded and settled more comfortably in the chair as the other boy made his way toward the door. He paused about halfway there and turned as Jean was adjusting himself on the seat.

“Everything I just told you doesn’t leave this room, you hear me?”

“What happens when he’s well enough to come back? Everyone’s going to see.” Though Jean might have been nosey enough to wheedle the story from Eren he recognized a secret worth keeping when he heard one and was annoyed to find himself a little distressed on Armin’s behalf. He knew he was granted a rare insight on the boy and didn’t want to see it misinterpreted and abused by some of the rougher trainees.

“That’s for me to worry about,” was Eren’s reply, and then he slipped out the door, leaving Jean with his thoughts.

Jean hated being alone with his thoughts almost as much as he hated every fourth Sunday. Maybe even a little more.

He let out a frustrated noise and cast his gaze to the wall across the room. This was the moment, he supposed, where if he was the antihero in one of those cheap dime store novels he should reevaluate his opinions and realize what a heartless bastard he’d been and pull a complete reversal, redeem himself in the eyes of the reader and live his life then on like a saint. It was a good thing he was Jean Kirschtein, then, soldier extraordinaire, staunch in his opinions, master of his universe, blah blah blah and _not_ an antihero in a dime store novel, because there was no way a pretty little blond boy with a checkered past was going to make him reevaluate _shit_.

Armin suddenly twitched in his sleep and Jean dove for the bucket under the cot in a panic. He stood at the ready with the bucket in hand until the boy shifted and resettled, a small, rattling sigh escaping his abnormally red lips. The sight gave Jean pause: he looked like one of those fragile little ceramic dolls his mother once collected, sweet and smooth and breakable, and he wanted nothing more in that moment than to put him up high on a shelf, far out of reach from grasping fingers and covetous eyes and _damn it_. Was this what Reiner felt, what Eren had known all along - this strange, powerful urge to protect the boy of weak body but strong spirit?

Jean set the bucket on the floor as gently as he could and sat back down in a sort of bewildered stupor. Just what the fuck _was_ this kid?

“How bad is it?” came a small, breathy voice, snapping Jean from his reverie. Large, fever-bright eyes opened and locked with his, wavering just a bit in apprehension and Jean froze, suddenly struck and ashamed by the idea that under any other circumstance the flush in Armin’s cheeks and brightness of his eyes would have looked like... _well_. It was best not to think about such things with Eren lurking nearby and already believing he was a pervert. Considering his current state of mind it wouldn’t have been entirely off the mark, either.

Jean swallowed hard. “I’m not supposed to tell you,” he murmured.

“You can see them, can’t you?”

Jean just shook his head, gnawing nervously on his thumb nail. Eren had scotched his telling Armin about his hair and _not_ about being able to see the scars, but he could tell Armin knew, with that roundabout question of his, and felt a little guilty.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Armin whispered, gaze intent. “Not you.”

“They’re not -” he began, then checked himself. Armin was right; he didn’t need Jean to lie to him, not when he’d lived through hell and come out stronger for it. “I’m sorry,” he said instead. “For what they did to you. You didn’t deserve it.”

“I know,” Armin replied simply. “You don’t have to be sorry, though. You didn’t do anything.”

“But I did,” Jean groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “I was just like them, I thought -”

A small, overwarm hand reached out to tentatively touch Jean’s own and Jean peeped out from behind his fingers to find Armin smiling at him gently, eyelids drooping in exhaustion. “It’s okay,” he murmured and closed his eyes. “S’okay.”

He was out before Jean could respond, leaving him alone with his thoughts once again.

_Fuck_.

 

*

 

Jean hung the last of the shirts and knuckled the small of his back, amazed at how after an entire year of grueling training he could still feel torn to shreds by doing simple chores, especially after sitting on his ass for an hour watching Armin sleep until Eren had returned and grilled him about what happened in his absence. Jean told him nothing, that Armin hadn’t woken at all and he’d found himself surprised at how easily the lie came to his lips, and how easily Eren believed it. His reputation for honesty finally did him a favor for once instead of landing him in hot water and he didn’t know how to feel about that.

Jean didn’t know how to feel about a lot of things, now. Well, one in particular, really, laying in the infirmary in striped pajamas, but he wasn’t sure where to even start with that. He had a strange, overwhelming urge to prove himself to Armin, to prove that he understood now and he wasn’t just another one of many who’d written him off as a lost cause, not when he and others like him _were_ the cause, the reason why humanity hadn’t already faded into obscurity. But how? He couldn’t just go up to him and tell him, not with Eren always within earshot and now assuredly watching him like a hawk since calling him out earlier that day. A letter would leave evidence if not disposed of properly, and it wasn’t really his style anyway, so then what? Pantomime? Writing “I get it” in the dirt with a stick?

Heaving a belabored sigh, Jean grabbed the empty wash basket and trudged back toward the laundry, determined to finish out his day with a modicum of pride still intact, but that determination evaporated a moment later when he spied a light blue pile of fabric forgotten in the corner. Frustrated beyond belief he snatched the thing up off the floor and was about to throw it into the rag bin when he realized it was an old sweater, made of rough homespun and soft from wear. An unexpected pang of homesickness softened his mood as he recalled sitting at his mother’s feet as a small child, balling her wool as her knitting needles clacked rhythmically in the warm afternoon. She’d taught him how, when he was a little older but before the notion of masculinity gripped his brain, but nothing ever came of it save for a few crude little scarves and one lopsided hat made entirely out of scraps. He wondered idly if she’d kept any of them, or if he could even remember how to do it now.

Then it hit him.

 

*

 

Armin was released from the infirmary five days later, the medication Mikasa retrieved finally doing its job and pushing the nonsense from his system. The boy was tired and a little thinner but otherwise no worse for wear, with no lasting ill effects, as predicted. Though he was released first thing in the morning he was still conspicuously absent throughout the day, and Jean assumed Eren was waiting for a quiet moment to steal him back into the barracks in order to stem the inevitable tide of tactless questions once the evidence of Armin’s childhood was discovered etched across his scalp.

The bell rang for evening mess and Jean hung back, outside the far window of the barracks and peered in, waiting. Dinnertime was the one hour of the day when the barracks were guaranteed to be completely empty, and he figured Eren and Armin would use it to their advantage.

Sure enough, after just a few minutes, the door opened and the two ducked inside, Eren’s jacket draped over Armin’s head like a veil. Armin pulled it off and handed it back to his friend and turned toward his bed, then froze.

“What’s this?” Armin plucked a light blue lump from his bed and turned it over in his small hands, running his fingers over the surface and inspecting it with wide eyes. His lips parted in a soft gasp and he spun around, waving the thing before him excitedly. “Did you do this?”

“What? What is it?” Eren asked.

“It’s a hat!” Armin breathed reverently. “You mean it wasn’t you? Mikasa?”

“She doesn’t know how to knit,” Eren told him with a frown, looking at the thing like it might leap out of Armin’s hands and bite him. “Well, go on. Let’s see.”

Armin pulled the hat over his head and past his ears, closing his eyes. “It’s so _warm_ ,” he sighed contentedly.

“Uglier than sin, though. The right side is longer than the other.”

“It’s _lovely_.”

“I wonder where it came from.”

“Hm, I _wonder_.”

Jean grinned to himself, pleased his message was well-received and turned on his heel toward the mess hall, whistling cheerfully and feeling lighter than he had in days.

 

*

 

The next morning Jean spied a patch of blue seated at a table in the mess hall at breakfast, and as he passed by to get in line he caught Armin’s eye and a mouthed “thank you,” as well as a confused look from Thomas when he recognized his repurposed sweater on Armin’s head.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally intended to be a one-shot that attempted to explain why Armin's hair was always that awkward length, but then I realized I could hate myself _much more thoroughly_ if I made it part of a pretentious, angst-ridden series. :D
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://flenserfics.tumblr.com)
> 
> If you loved this fic, please read its distant future follow-up, [Heroic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4551642), and vote in the comments!


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